Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Catch up time and a substitute car.

The past two months (June and July) have been so busy, I can't even believe they're already over. Since May 9th, which is my previous mileage tagged entry. I've driven another 3300 miles putting the odometer on the Volvo right at around 133,300.

The surprising thing, however, is that the mileage on the car should rightfully be significantly less than that. The car should only be at about 131,500 based on my daily commute. How did it get that high up? you might ask. The answer is 4 trips down to Harrisonburg. Those trips alone accounted for 1000 of those miles. Unfortunately, three of the trips were due to a family emergency, so they were not logged, and when I was there I didn't get the time to update. One of the trips was for a wedding.

The bad part about all of this driving is the Air Conditioning decided to go out on around the 25th of May, which was exactly five days after my most post. This summer has been one of record heat in the DC metro region which has made the car absolutely miserable to drive. Fortunately for me, I've only been going back and forth from my new job which is only 2 miles from my house, and school, which is also only two miles from my house for the most part. The four trips to Harrisonburg were the absolutely most miserable experiences of my life.

This weekend, I have a wedding in Raleigh, North Carolina. The five hour drive down and five hour drive back seemed just a bit too much to handle, so I decided to enlist the assistance of my aunt, and have borrowed a substitute vehicle for the trip down and back. The car is a 1998 Nissan Altima GXE, which is the only car from anyone I know I could borrow which I'd be able to include in the blog. Why? It's over 100,000 miles. At 180,000 miles on the odometer, the car has so far been a surprise for one, rather large, reason: unlike the Volvo, on this car everything still works.

So far, my only issue is one of the speakers has dried out giving off a buzzing sound, but after 10-15 minutes, while the buzzing remains, you no longer notice it.

While I picked the car apart for the first bit, after a few miles down the road, I realized it is a very solid vehicle, even with the extremely high mileage. The fact of the matter is, the car doesn't feel at all like it's nearly got 200,000 miles on it.

Tomorrow I'll get to drive during the heat of the day, and I can say without a doubt in my mind, the most exciting thing about driving this car for a few days is going to be seeing what it's like to drive a car with AC again.